WASHINGTON—The Department of
Health and Human Services mandate that would force virtually all employers to pay
for sterilization and contraceptives, including abortion-inducing drugs to
employees has “absurd consequences,” Bishop William E. Lori said February 28.

Bishop
Lori of Bridgeport, Connecticut, chair of the US bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on
Religious Liberty, made his comments in testimony about the Patient Protection
and Affordable Care Act before the House of Representatives Judiciary
Committee.

Bishop
Lori voiced concern for an “accommodation” President Obama described February
10, which suggested a way around moral concerns the church outlined in the health
care reform act.

“This
‘accommodation’ would not change the scope of the mandate and its exemption,”
he said. “Instead, it would take the form of additional regulations whose
precise contours are yet unknown and that may not issue until August 2013.”

“For
present purposes, the ‘accommodation’ is just a legally unenforceable promise
to alter the way the mandate would still apply to those who are still not
exempt from it,” he said. He added that “the promised alteration appears
logically impossible.” He said that despite discussions on an accommodation the
President has already finalized the controversial mandate that was proposed
months earlier “without change,” thereby “excluding in advance any expansion of
the ‘religious employer’ exemption. Somehow, this situation of ‘no change,’ is
heralded as ‘great change,’ for which the Administration has been widely
congratulated.”

Bishop
Lori underlined the government’s forcing a religious body to violate its
beliefs.

“I
emphasize this word—‘force’—precisely because it is one of the key differences
between a mere dispute over reproductive health policy and a dispute over
religious freedom. This is not a matter
of whether contraception may be prohibited by the government. This is not even
a matter of whether contraception may be supported by the government. Instead,
it is a matter of whether religious people and institutions may be forced by
the government to provide coverage for contraception or sterilization, even if
that violates their religious beliefs,” he said.

“It is not a matter of ‘repackaging’ or ‘framing’
this as a religious freedom dispute. It is a matter of acknowledging the basic
fact that government is forcing religious people and groups to do something
that violates their consciences,” he said.

Bishop
Lori noted that earlier “people and groups of all political stripes—left, right,
and center—came forward to join us in opposing it. But now, the mere prospect
of the ‘accommodation’ described above has caused some simply to abandon their
prior objection. In so doing, they
undermine the basic American values that they would otherwise espouse.”

“Only
in the post-mandate world might it be considered ‘liberal’ for the government
to coerce people into violating their religious beliefs; to justify that
coercion based on the minority status of those beliefs; to intrude into the
internal affairs of religious organizations; to crush out religious diversity
in the private sector; and to incentivize religious groups to serve fewer of
the needy.”

He
questioned why sterilization, contraception, and abortifacients are requirements
of the health care act while decisions on prescription drugs and hospitalization
that are supposed to be “essential” are “handed off to each state.”

“HHS
will brook no dissent regarding whether sterilization, contraception, and
abortifacients must be covered as ‘preventive services,’” he said. “HHS is
essentially indifferent regarding what is— or is not—mandated as an ‘essential
health benefit.’ As a result, genuinely beneficial items may well be omitted
from coverage, state-by-state. By contrast, states have no such discretion with
respect to sterilization, contraception, and abortifacients.”

He
asked the committee for support for the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act
(H.R.1179, S. 1467) to “help bring the world aright again.”

“This legislation would not expand
religious freedom beyond its present limits, but simply retain Americans’
longstanding freedom not to be forced by the federal government to violate
their convictions,” he said.

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